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The original hospital opened in 1894 in a wooden building on a 17-acre (6.9 ha) meadow located at Oak Lawn Avenue and Maple. The name Parkland came from the land on which the hospital was built, originally purchased by the city as a park.[2] A brick building (the first hospital brick building erected in Texas, now owned by the Trammell Crow Company) replaced the wooden facility in 1913.[3]

In 1954, Parkland moved to 5201 Harry Hines Boulevard about a mile from its original site.

On August 20, 2015, at 6 a.m., the new emergency room officially opened and began accepting patients, and other staff members and patients were officially transferred throughout the next few days, from 5201 Harry Hines Boulevard to the new hospital located across the street at 5200 Harry Hines Boulevard. The new hospital welcomed its first birth, a boy who arrived by Caesarean section, at 9:40 a.m.[4][5]

After he was shot on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was rushed to Parkland, where he was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. in Trauma Room 1. At the same time, Texas Governor John Connally, wounded in the same shooting, was treated in Trauma Room 2, and survived.

Two days after the assassination, Oswald was rushed to Parkland after being shot in the abdomen by Ruby and died in operating room #5 after over 90 minutes of surgery. Ruby died on January 3, 1967 in the same emergency room, from a pulmonary embolism associated with lung cancer.

Since Ruby's death in 1967, the emergency room has been remodeled and the area where Kennedy was pronounced dead, Oswald was operated on and died and Ruby died now serves as the hospital's emergency radiology department. A plaque there marks the location where Trauma Room 1 was located.[6] Parkland's JFK history wall will be noted at the new hospital.[7]

Parkland is the Dallas County public hospital; funds are primarily provided by a specially designated property tax on Dallas County residents.

Parkland serves as one of Dallas's four Level I Trauma Centers (alongside Baylor University Medical Center, Methodist Dallas Medical Center, and Children's Medical Center), a primary care center for Dallas County residents, and (along with UT Southwestern) as a medical and surgical referral center for North Texas and parts of Southern Oklahoma. Thus, virtually all medical and surgical subspecialties are represented—which makes Parkland a destination for post-graduate medical training. The Parkland Burn Center, one of the largest civilian burn units in the U.S., is famous for the Parkland Formula for fluid resuscitation, developed by Charles R. Baxter in the 1960s.[8][9] The fame of the Parkland formula is due to its being one of the first treatments for burn that included rehydration and electrolytic management.[10]

It has the distinction of delivering more infants under one roof than any other hospital in the nation, averaging 15-16,000 deliveries per year. Parkland Memorial has eleven prenatal clinics and employs 80 doctors training to become obstetricians-gynecologists and 45 nurse-midwives. In 2005, the staff delivered 15,590 babies, an average of more than 42 infants per day.[11] Parkland created one of the first high-risk antenatal units in the nation and had the first neonatal intensive care unit in North Texas.

Parkland has approximately 240,000 emergency visits a year, for the co-located main emergency room (153,915 visits in 2013), and the urgent care unit (60,013 visits in 2013).[12]

Parkland's high volume of patients led to the decision by the Dallas County Commissioners Court to propose replacing the overcrowded, 50+-year-old building with a new 1,700,000-square-foot (160,000 m2), 17-story, 862-bed facility, along with a new 380,000-square-foot (35,000 m2) outpatient center, a 275,000-square-foot (25,500 m2) office facility, and parking for 6,000 cars. The total cost would be $1.27 billion, to be paid for through three avenues: 1) a $747 million bond proposition (contingent on voter approval, which was obtained in November 2008), 2) $350 million of cash from current and future operations, and 3) $150 million from private donations.[13]

The board approved nearly $100 million in contracts and hired two architectural firms – HDR, Inc. (based in Omaha, Nebraska, but operates a large practice in Dallas) and Corgan Associates Inc. (based in Dallas) – to design the new building. (A parking garage was completed as a design/build project by Whiting-Turner Construction and the architecture firm of Omniplan in January 2012.) One major feature of the new facility is that movements of staff and supplies are handled in separate corridors and elevators from those used by patients and visitors.

The formal groundbreaking ceremony was held in October 2010; the facility was officially dedicated in March 2015,[14] with all patients and staff officially occupying the facility that August.[4] The new facility is immediately across Harry Hines Boulevard from the former hospital complex, and is served by the Medical District station of DART light rail, which opened in December 2010. [15] In addition to Dallas County taxpayers funding the public hospital, large private donations were made as well, over the next five years; one major donation of $1 million was made by the Bank of America Charitable Foundation. Donors have their names permanently etched in glass panels in the two-story, glass atrium main lobby.[16][17]

In May, 2014, a new 44,300-square-foot, Parkland Health & Hospital System-affiliated outpatient clinic near Fair Park began construction on a 7-acre site adjacent to DART’s Hatcher Station. The $19.8 million clinic, which was designed by BOKA Powell for Frazier Revitalization Inc. and Parkland Health & Hospital System, serves geriatric and behavioral health patients, along with adults, women, children, and infants. It also provides on-site diagnostic imaging and lab services. Exam rooms feature flexible equipment setups, and an on-site conference facility accommodates education and wellness programs.[18] The clinic, officially named Hatcher Station Health Center, opened on May 19, 2015.[19]

Abuse of patients in the hospital's psychiatric emergency room has been documented and brought about federal oversight of the hospital.[20] On March 16, 2014, a nurse forced a roll of toilet paper into the mouth of a patient who had spit at him.[21] Texas health authorities investigated the incident and found that Parkland was in “substantial compliance” with federal Medicare regulations in late 2014.[22]